


Daybreak

by RaeDMagdon



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Fingering, Happy Sex, Hurt/Comfort, SMUTCATION, Vanilla, earth date, melding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 13:19:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11715186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeDMagdon/pseuds/RaeDMagdon
Summary: This, Liara thinks, is how all dates with Shepard should end: making love in a wide-windowed hotel room with the soft glow of city lights painting landscapes along their bodies.





	Daybreak

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Рассвет](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13724931) by [fandom_MassEffect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_MassEffect/pseuds/fandom_MassEffect), [meg_aka_moula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meg_aka_moula/pseuds/meg_aka_moula)



> Smutcation continues! (Follow me @raedmagdon for more.)
> 
> Prompt was: "Please write a Shiara Earth date? Like, Shep and Liara, sometime after recovering from the Crucible, quietly enjoying a night out in a beautiful Earth city rebuilt and flourishing, Shepard finally seeing the peace and happiness she and her team achieved for humanity and also getting her own piece of it now that she has a secure future w Liara. Just a nice date that makes their heavy hearts feel happier please :) "

This, Liara thinks, is how all dates with Shepard should end: making love in a wide-windowed hotel room with the soft glow of city lights painting landscapes along their bodies.

It isn’t that she dislikes the wilderness. She enjoys the quiet, the solitude, the peace that she feels when she’s away on a dig. But this is different. There is something beautiful about being surrounded by life, about knowing she and Shepard are part of its fabric.

It isn’t often that Liara lets her mind drift to the war as Shepard’s lips trail over her breasts, teasing the peaks of her nipples to stiff, spit-slick points. But sometimes, she can’t help it. She can’t help gazing down at Shepard’s adorably freckled face and stroking her thumb over the white scar that cuts through her bondmate’s eyebrow. She can’t help remembering that these perfect moments were almost erased.

Those are the moments she says “I love you” with glistening eyes, and when Shepard says, “I am yours,” just as Liara herself pledged before parting from her for what she feared would be the final time. It is a promise, given and exchanged every day, because they have another day.

The evidence of their trauma is still vivid on both of their bodies. Shepard’s lips kiss scars long since healed, a streaky bullet wound on her side that swells out from her flesh just a little, an old burn above her hip where the skin is a faint purple. And Liara has tasted the same on her tongue, the beautiful scar down the middle of Shepard’s chest, the pockmarks on her shoulder.

These old wounds are beautiful because the two of them have survived. Survived to see cities rebuilt, springing up like new saplings after the forest fire. Survived to see families reunited and children born. Survived to reap their well-earned reward, to rest in each other’s arms for as long as they wish, without death closing in around them. Here, in this room, in all of Vancouver, in all of the Sol system, in all of the Milky Way, there is life.

“May I?” Liara asks, running her hand down along Shepard’s side just as Shepard murmurs, “Let me…” They both laugh for wanting to go first. There is no reason either of them has to wait. Liara finds the stiff bundle of Shepard’s clit as Shepard’s fingers stroke through the lips of her azure, and the two of them shudder as one.

They don’t wait before melding. There is nothing to keep them apart anymore. Sometimes the two of them enter their own universe, their own small cluster of stars where only their love exists, but not tonight. Tonight the light of the stars are the lights of the city. The pink glow of the sky is the pink of the cotton candy Shepard bought her on the boardwalk, so unbearably sweet that Liara had moaned in surprise.

Sometimes the sweetness of being with Shepard is overwhelming. During the war, she had feared the fantasies that fueled her during those dark days would never come to pass, or that if she survived, life would not live up to her hopes. But this new life of theirs has been everything she dreamed of and more, and she will gladly take as many centuries of it as she can get.

The rolling of Shepard’s body and the pull of Shepard’s mind become more insistent. As Shepard’s fingers fill her, Liara begins to shake. In Shepard’s breath, she feels the afternoon breeze fluttering through waving Alliance flags, and her tears well up just the same.

 _‘We’re here,’_ the fullness within her body and mind say.  _‘We’re alive.’_

She sends Shepard what is in her heart too, images of flying frigates, of bustling crowds full of laughter and embraces. They had held hands on the wharf, gazing out onto the ocean and watching sailboats pass by. Liara remembers the night before their attack on Cerberus, when she wished for nothing more than to disappear with Shepard, to escape on a ship and lose their way in the far reaches of the galaxy. Even though Shepard would never abandon her duty, Liara is so glad they didn’t steal away, because a ship coming home is one of the most beautiful things she has ever known.

They linger in memory awhile, then return to the present, trading kisses, stroking faster. The pull between bodies and minds is the most natural thing in the world, and even though she has experienced it hundreds of time, Liara is yet in awe. She will never get used to having Shepard’s fingers within her, hitting places that make every color brighter. She will never get used to the way Shepard stiffens and throbs beneath her fingers. When she slides inside as well, Shepard groans into her mouth, sucking the tip of her tongue.

 _‘I love you,’_ they think again. And then,  _‘we’re so lucky… I never imagined…’_

_‘I imagined, but didn’t dare to hope—’_

_‘We don’t need hope. We’re here.’_

Their peak is slow, but powerful, just like the buildup. There is no desperation, just waves upon waves of joy and relief. As Shepard tightens around her and Liara feels herself begin to ripple, they are back aboard the Normandy, flying over an ocean of cheering people, with whistling fireworks to light up the dark sky and turn it bright as dawn.

Liara can touch that dawn with her fingertips, taste it on Shepard’s lips. Their dawn has come and there is nothing to do but soak in the warm glow after being starved of sunlight for so, so long.

They do not part for a long while, content to rest within each other, to trade more languid kisses and, eventually, resume their rhythm with bodies bathed in fresh sweat.

This, Liara thinks, is how all dates with Shepard should end: making love in a wide-windowed hotel room with the soft glow of city lights painting landscapes along their bodies.


End file.
